Cloudy and windy today with high about 38.  Not so cold last night: 23.  Late in the day it cleared.  Snow is forecast for Tuesday; possibly heavy.  

Into the woods by 8:00 AM.  We had pipe problems again.  We drain the pipes or else they would freeze.   Liquid does not move uphill but we had an uphill section of pipe right by the value leading into the evaporator that did not drain.    The tapped sap froze the valve.  So we got out the small propane tank to thaw it.  Set us back about an hour.

We started boiling in earnest with the goal of emptying the storage tank.  The wonderful aroma of maple was soon all around us.  We could even detect it outside the building as the wind blew the stream  around. 

We got water with the tractor and milk cans.  We got all the finishing equipment and supplies: syrup tester;  filter press,  filter papers and filter aid, digital thermometer,  bottles.  While boiling we washed the finishing pan and bottling pan.  We were anticipating there would be syrup by the end of the day.

By 3:30 PM we had a batch of syrup ready on the evaporator.  We emptied the batch into the milk can.   It was small batch.  Typically we don’t bottle such a small batch.  We would leave it in the milk can and add additional batches to it.   But since this is the first syrup of the season its special.  We wanted to get it bottled so we could say we have syrup!

February 26th we have syrup.  This is very early.  Maple syrup is the first crop off the year and this year it came a little early.

With the storage tank empty and the first syrup bottled, we were done for the day by 5:00 PM.